JBF Leadership Awards

"If we really believe in food, we must do something about it, for our voices should be raised above the rest.” — James Beard in a letter to Helen Evans Brown dated May 5, 1958.

For the first time, we are soliciting recommendations for the James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards. Please enter your recommendation here.

The James Beard Foundation’s Leadership Awards spotlight the important and complex realms of sustainability, food justice, and public health. They raise awareness of these timely issues by celebrating the visionaries responsible for creating a healthier, safer, and more equitable and sustainable food system.

The Leadership Awards recognize specific outstanding initiatives as well as bodies of work and lifetime achievement. Excellence of work, innovation in approach, and scale of impact within a community or the nation are among the criteria used to select the recipients. Honorees are chosen by a volunteer committee of experts and the cohort of past Leadership Award recipients. The Foundation will award 2019 honorees a $10,000 cash prize for the first time.

The 2019 James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards are presented in association with Deloitte and will take place on Sunday, May 5, 2019 in Chicago.